Avoidance Is Not Neutral. It Is a Strategy

Hosted by Dr Shah

Sun, Jul 19, 2026

5:00 PM UTC (1 hour)

Virtual (Zoom)

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Strategy Under Fear: Decide Better When You’re Trying Not to Lose
Dr S Shah
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What you'll learn

How to spot avoidance disguised as patience or strategy

A live case study and diagnostic that surfaces the avoidance hiding inside what felt like a reasonable decision

What you protect in the conversations you avoid

A diagnostic that names the relationship, identity, or outcome your avoidance is defending without your knowledge

One protocol you can apply to a current avoidance this week

A pre-commitment rule you write live in the session, applied to one conversation you have been postponing

Why this topic matters

Avoidance is the most respectable of the leadership failures. It rarely announces itself. It dresses up as diplomacy, as picking your battles, as emotional intelligence. By the time the cost becomes visible, the avoided conversation has compounded into a crisis with higher stakes and less room to manoeuvre. Senior leaders cannot afford to keep mistaking quiet avoidance for strategy.

You'll learn from

Dr Shah

Decision Strategist | Speaker | Founder-Educator

I spent years researching a single paradox: why defensive decisions made under pressure so often create the very outcomes leaders were trying to prevent. This became the foundation of my decision-making framework, the Defensive Decision Paradox.

Since 2016, I’ve run my own education company, Learning Brains, where I’ve taught, built programmes, and made real business decisions under pressure. I’ve also experienced the cost of fear-driven choices firsthand, giving the framework both academic depth and practical relevance.

As a PepTalk speaker, I share ideas on fear, pressure, and judgment at work.

I also live with a metabolic condition that creates physiological anxiety without cause, teaching me that the urgency of fear is rarely reliable evidence of the true stakes.

University of Bath

University of Bath
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